Buck Harvey: Touch of Presti powers Thunder

DALLAS — It’s halftime Tuesday night, and the players walk past on their way back to the floor. Sam Presti, standing in the hallway, catches the eyes of several.

“You good?” he asks.

Presti does so softly, as if he’s more reassuring than inquisitive.

He’s not gathering data. But he will as the series with the Mavericks goes on, and he’ll take notes, and he’ll make sure any cracks within his Oklahoma City franchise aren’t widening.

Such as?

The relationship between Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.

If there is a crack, Presti would never admit it. If anything, the Thunder franchise has been defensive about the issue. The word, from them, is that their stars get along beautifully.

Maybe Durant and Westbrook do, and Durant’s defense of his teammate Tuesday night fit with that. “Russell Westbrook will not go 3 for 15 again,” Durant said. “You can quote me on that.”

Still, some scouts wonder if the opening loss to the Mavericks provided other clues. With Durant on his way to a 40-point night, didn’t Westbrook force a few things? Durant, after all, had more assists than his point guard did.

The Spurs never had to deal with this. David Robinson smoothly moved aside for Tim Duncan, and Manu Ginobili was pliable enough to come off the bench. Presti, working for the Spurs then, saw it all.

Now he oversees a different dynamic. Durant and Westbrook are the same age, 22, with the same goals, but with different backgrounds.

Durant has been the anointed star from his first day at Texas: No. 2 overall draft pick, rookie of the year, scoring champ.

Westbrook was 5-foot-10 until a growth spurt kicked in during high school. He didn’t receive his first scholarship offer until the summer before his senior season, and he started only one game as a freshman at UCLA. Then, he went 1 for 11 before fouling out.

Even in his sophomore season, as he emerged, he was overshadowed by Kevin Love and Darren Collison. The Los Angeles Times ran a mock draft in late March of 2008, and Westbrook was projected to go at No. 21.

“I don’t see it,” is how one scout assessed Westbrook’s NBA future.

Most had him going higher than that. Still, how many fans were aware of Westbrook when he arrived in San Antonio for the 2008 Final Four? His opponent was a kid named Derrick Rose.

Watching at the time, gathering all data, was Presti. He was finishing the franchise’s last season in Seattle then, with the team on its way to the second-worst record in the league.

It was supposed to be a two-player draft, after Rose and Michael Beasley. But, in the lottery, Presti fell to the fourth draft position.

Presti reacted with a reach. After Memphis took O.J. Mayo with the third pick, Presti gambled on someone who was third in scoring on his college team.

It was a masterful job of scouting. Beasley was traded, and Mayo nearly was. Westbrook has become an All-Star.

For Presti, who Gregg Popovich once called the Spurs’ “resident genius,” it was a culmination of research and personality evaluation. Presti had done his homework, just as he had in San Antonio when he was integral in the drafting of Tony Parker.

The quality that Presti and his staff saw and loved in Westbrook is one that will be in play tonight: resiliency.

Still, the same Westbrook that felt overlooked in college has reason to feel that way with Durant as a teammate. So maybe the same kind of conflict that drove apart Stephon Marbury and Kevin Garnett years ago in Minnesota surfaces in Oklahoma City.